1. Field of the Invention
The invention concerns an assembly comprised of joined conductive components coated with cataphoretic paint, and a processes for production thereof. A process of this general type is already known from DE 44 35 050 A1.
2. Related Art of the Invention
The application of anti-corrosive base coats by cataphoretic painting (KTL) is known to those working in automobile body production. An example thereof can be found in DE 44 35 050 A1. However, a narrow gap occurs, in particular in the contact area of joined components, in which the cataphoretic coating can penetrate only incompletely, or not at all. For this reason this type of gap is conventionally treated with a sealant following KTL, in order to ensure a corrosion protection for the total assembly. This type of sealing material behaves highly variably and frequently unpredictably with respect to it's adhesion to the KTL coated and not coated assembly surfaces, and thus, a checking of adhesiveness is an indispensable part of quality control. Both the sealing as well as the adhesion checking involve supplemental process steps, which are associated with supplemental costs.
In the case of pre-coated sheet metal, in particular zinc coated sheet metal as likewise used in the automobile industry, the coating material has a significantly lower boiling point than the melting point of the sheet metal material. Thereby, during welding of this type of sheet metal, explosion like vaporization of coating material can occur at the overlap joint, which strongly compromises the quality of the joint.
For improving the joining quality it has already been proposed to use spacers to produce a narrow gap between the sheets, in order to allow the vaporized coating material to escape. As spacers, suitable topographic changes of the sheet metal can be produced by laser impacting of the surface according to DE 10241593 A1.